THE STERADIAN TRAIL: BOOK #0 OF THE INFINITY CYCLE

by M. N. KRISH

  ‘Yes, indeed. The guy who paid a little visit to your campus . . . he’s the same guy I’m after.’

  ‘Are you sure? Jeffrey Williams is such a common name.’

  ‘Positive,’ Joshua said and lowered himself into a chair. ‘His university, TDU, it’s mentioned next to his name.’

  ‘Okay. What do you want to do?’

  ‘Correction. We not you,’ said Joshua. ‘We need to go to Kanchipuram–’

  ‘What!’ Lakshman exclaimed. ‘Kanchipuram?’

  ‘Yes,’ Joshua said nonchalantly. ‘We don’t have much time to waste. It’s probably too late today, so we leave first thing tomorrow morning.’

  ‘Why do you want to go to Kanchipuram of all places?’ Lakshman asked.

  ‘Once again, for the record, it’s not “you” but “we”.’

  ‘What for?’ Lakshman asked and then with a sigh, ‘I’m totally lost, Josh.’

  ‘Why don’t we go sit down somewhere as soon as your day is over? Maybe over a beer or something? I’ll fill you in, in every sense of the term.”

  ‘Beer is fine,’ Lakshman said, immediately perking up. Beer was always fine with him. But when he considered all the work piled up on his desk, he realized it wasn’t going to be easy to take the day off tomorrow. ‘But do you really need me for Kanchipuram?’ he asked. ‘I have loads of work.’

  ‘Hey, is it so hard to get away from work for one day? Put it down as a research trip. And that won’t be a lie, I swear.’

  ‘Work is one thing. But I also need to think about leaving Urmila behind. She’ll be all alone at home,’ Lakshman said, thinking on his feet. If he had to summon his dead grandmother for rescue, he would have summoned her.

  ‘Don’t give me that crap, Lax,’ Joshua said acidly. ‘You haven’t changed much after all these years, have you? I know Kanchipuram is only a couple of hours away from here. Once we get to Tambaram, there won’t be much traffic and we’ll be there in an hour. We can go and get back in half a day. I’ll drop you home by sunset, I promise. I’m sure Urmila can manage without you till them.’

  For once Joshua’s knowledge of the local terrain managed to take even Lakshman by surprise. He had no more excuses that would wash with Joshua. ‘Okay, but you better tell me why we need to go.’

  ‘Good. That’s what I like to hear,’ Joshua said.

  Lakshman cocked a curious eye at Joshua. What did he mean?

  ‘You said “we”,’ Joshua said with a mischievous gleam in his eyes. ‘We’re already making progress.’

  ‘How the hell do you know about Kanchipuram? I wouldn’t have thought that you would know the name of the place, and here you are giving driving directions off the top of your head, even remembering places like Tambaram on the way.’

  ‘Which was perhaps why you thought you could BS me,’ Joshua chuckled. ‘Why don’t we do this? You join me in the bar this evening and I’ll let you in on everything. The full disclosure, I promise.’

  ‘All right,’ said Lakshman. ‘I’ll come down to the bar and let’s take it from there. But let me be clear upfront, I still haven’t promised to go with you.’

  ‘Understood,’ Joshua said and rose to his feet. ‘I’ll get moving then.’

  ‘Let me walk you to the car,’ Lakshman said. ‘What do you want to do with this file? Do you want to keep it or return it?’

  ‘Could you keep it safe in your office? We might need it again.’

  ‘Sure,’ Lakshman said. He slipped the thing into a drawer and locked it up.

  ~

  Joshua and Lakshman trooped down the corridor, the clip-clop of their shoes reverberating in the near-spooky emptiness. Joshua looked around as he walked, drinking in the strangeness of the classrooms and facilities in this part of the world. When they passed by the computer lab, he stopped to take a curious look through the window, sort of like Vanathi’s husband outside the ICU. The sight of UNIX machines dotting the room made him wonder how far the labs here had come since the days of mainframes and punched cards, monochrome monitors and German manuals, dumb terminals and dot matrix printouts. India surely was on the move.

  Joshua was about to turn away when his roving gaze stumbled on a petite form in an amber top in front of a terminal at the far end windows.

  ‘Lax, that’s the same girl from yesterday, isn’t she?’

  When Lakshman took a peek inside, he could see Divya sitting hypnotized in front of the computer, all alone in the lab, her dexterous hands drumming away at the keyboard. ‘Yeah, it’s her.’

  ‘I think I’ll say hi to her. Can we go in for a minute?’

  As soon as Lakshman opened the door, a gust of air loaded with the aroma of Dettol hit them in the face. Only then did Lakshman remember what the place had been through.

  ‘Jeez, smells like a hospital ward in there,’ Joshua said.

  ‘It could smell far worse inside,’ Lakshman said. ‘Why don’t you just wait here? I’ll call her outside.’

  Lakshman held his breath and stepped in. Divya turned around to the sound. She shot up from her seat when she saw Lakshman. ‘Good afternoon, sir.’

  Without a word, Lakshman motioned her outside the lab and stepped out.

  Divya was surprised to see Joshua in the corridor. ‘Good afternoon, sir,’ she said to him with a smile.

  ‘Hi, good afternoon. How are you?’ said Joshua.

  ‘I’m fine, sir. How are you?’ Divya replied, taking Joshua’s question a little too literally.

  ‘Doing great. Thank you,’ Joshua said.

  ‘I thought you were leaving for Boston yesterday?’

  ‘Well,’ Joshua said, hesitating a little. ‘Change of plans. I have some more things to take care of here. What are you doing here? Isn’t it supposed to be your holidays? . . . Don’t let this guy make you work so hard,’ he said, stabbing a finger in Lakshman’s direction. ‘You’re only a sophomore for crying out loud.’

  ‘I’m actually working on your algorithm, sir,’ Divya said with a twinkle in her eyes. ‘I’m typing up the stuff to send to you.’

  Lakshman laughed, as did Joshua.

  ‘Oh, don’t kill yourself over it,’ Joshua said. ‘We may have bigger fish to fry. So go home and relax now, but don’t be surprised if we suddenly call on you to burn some brain cells for us.’

  ‘Anytime, sir.’

  ‘Are you in town for the next few days?’

  ‘Yes sir. I’m not going anywhere,’ Divya said.

  ‘Not travelling outside for holidays? I’m surprised.’

  ‘Winter is actually the best time to stay in the city, sir,’ Divya said.

  ‘Winter? In Madras?’ Joshua said, bemused. ‘I thought there were only three seasons here: summer, summerer and summerest?’

  Divya laughed. ‘Mid-December to mid-January is the music season here, sir. So we’re planning to go to some concerts.’

  ‘Right,’ Joshua said. ‘I remember seeing some ads in the paper. Didn’t realize it was such a big thing.’

  ‘Don’t worry, Josh,’ Lakshman said. ‘She’ll drop everything and come running if we ask her to.’

  ‘I hope it doesn’t come to that,’ Joshua said. ‘Trust you know how to reach her?’

  ‘You bet,’ Lakshman said. But he was baffled about what it was Joshua was pencilling in Divya for.

  ‘All right then. We’ll let you get back to work,’ Joshua said to Divya. ‘Saw you in there and thought I’d to say hi.’

  Divya said bye and ducked back into the lab, into the miasma of disinfectant and excrement.

  Lakshman escorted Joshua to the taxi waiting downstairs and waved a pensive goodbye. Trip to Kanchipuram. Help from Divya. What was Joshua really up to? Or worse, what kind of a jam was he really in?

  15

  Divya went home for a rather late bite of lunch. She had overeaten in the
morning; the mor kali had slid down the gullet like lava and settled down in the gut like a lump of lead. It was almost teatime now and she still wasn’t feeling hungry. But she didn’t want to mess up her eating routine too much and decided to drop by for a quick bite of something.

  The fact that Joshua had stopped by the lab just to say hello to her had left her in a jolly mood and she arrived home on her Scooty humming a merry tune.

  But the song died on her lips abruptly and her heart skipped a beat when she noticed that her usual parking spot outside the veranda was already taken. There was a Honda bike parked there with complete immunity like a royal caravan. She squeezed the Scooty between the bike and the wall and waited for the door to open. Meenakshi usually knew she had arrived from the squealing of the gate-hinges, but this afternoon, Divya had to ring the bell to get her attention. So there was no mistaking who had come calling.

  Meenakshi answered the door with a big smile on her face instead of reprimanding Divya for showing up so late for lunch. Divya dropped the Eastpack in the veranda, hung the Scooty keys and went in after her.

  A strange sight greeted her in the living room and she froze to a halt as soon as she stepped inside. Venus was on the floor with a namam blazing on his forehead, sitting cross-legged in front of her old writing desk. There was a small pile of paper slips on either side of the desk, held down by paper weights, surrounded by some loose sheets of paper fluttering and swirling under the fan.

  ‘What’re you doing?’ Divya asked him as Meenakshi went into the kitchen to warm up the food.

  ‘Can’t you see? I’m writing Sri Ramajayam,’ Venus said. Then raising his voice and making sure Meenakshi heard him, ‘Seems you refused to do it. How do you expect Amma to write it 10,008 times all by herself? We need to show some consideration for our parents, Divvy.’

  Amma. We. Our. Well played, Venus, Divya thought and broke into a smile. She now knew why Meenakshi looked so happy when she opened door.

  ‘When you were little, you used to spend all your holidays filling notebook after notebook with Sri Ramajayams. Won’t even talk to me if I came home. Don’t know what happened to you now.’

  ‘All right, Venus, enough. Don’t overplay your hand,’ Divya lowered her voice and said. ‘But I’m glad His Highness has decided to come here finally, at least for this,’ she pointed at the paper slips. ‘Give me a minute. Let me go debit all the carbon credits on my face and come.’

  Divya went in for a quick wash as Venus resumed his good work, notching up brownie points from Hanuman as well as his future mother-in-law. Oh yes, he needed them both, from the latter more than the former.

  Venus, aka Venu Sampath, final year, civil engineering, held in his secret possession the key to the happiness of many people. His parents and Divya’s especially. The two parties had sat down together before the engagement and worked out the modus operandi with the precision of a computer algorithm:

  START: Engagement.

  Step 1: Venus would win a scholarship for grad school in the US and move there first.

  Step 2: He would finish his MS and get a job.

  Step 3 (runs in parallel to Step 2): Divya would complete her course here.

  Step 4: The wedding would be held in Madras during the summer of their graduation.

  LOGIC CHECK: Venus had to plan his vacation accordingly.

  Step 5: They would travel together after the wedding to the US, where she could study further or take up a job, whatever the couple deemed fit.

  LOGIC CHECK: Venus had to take care not to apply for a Green Card until the wedding because Uncle Sam made it almost impossible for Green Card holders to bring their spouse from overseas.

  Step 6: Venus would apply for a Green Card as soon as Divya landed on American shores and walked into the all-embracing arms of Mother Liberty.

  Step 7: Green Card would arrive in the mail.

  Step 8: Kid or kids whatever the couple deemed fit, but born with American citizenship and passport.

  STOP: Live happily ever after.

  Venus had no complaints against the parental master plan except that it was he who had to set the ball rolling, gaining a toehold in America. It wouldn’t have been a problem if he had known about it a little earlier. But the engagement and the Plan were sprung on him after he had already spent two successful years mounting a largely successful guerrilla campaign against academics and pulling his grades down a steep slope like the value of the rupee; or, as Divya told him, after he had initialized himself into an infeasible solution. By the end of four semesters, he was so firmly entrenched at the bottom that even getting admitted into a decent school was going to be difficult, let alone winning a scholarship to cover the study; he wasn’t even going to set his sights in that direction.

  When his parents fixed his match with Divya and publicly released their blueprint for a happy and fulfilled life, he was trapped in a double-bind situation. And while he had to contend with his subpar performance, Divya raced up to the higher echelons of her class, making it clear it was only a matter of time before fellowships from all the top schools in the US began piling up on her table. Though he was proud of her as only a fiancé could be, he was acutely alive to the shame and embarrassment that would ensue – to him as well as his parents – if he failed to get into a decent school in the US. One particular scenario haunted him and gave him sleepless nights: he tagging along after her to the US as her dependant on a spouse visa. This nightmarish possibility forced him to pull up his socks and try to get his act together after the engagement. But the damage he’d inflicted on himself was irreparable. He had slipped by the yard and there was no way he could scale by the inch and make up. However hard he tried, whatever stunts he pulled, he could not shore up his grades beyond one or two decimal points.

  Tension kept mounting and reached its peak in the seventh semester when he began short-listing schools he wanted to apply to. He became so desperate and obsessed in his pursuit that Divya gradually slid off his radar screen. More so in November and December, when he had to put together his apps and also make progress on his final year project. Their meetings and phone calls became less and less frequent.

  But fortunately for Venus, Divya understood his predicament and even managed to empathize with him. Though his indifference bothered her, she felt hopeful that things would change for the better once he managed to get admission into grad school. She tried to put him at ease, giving him his space and not bringing up touchy topics in their discussions.

  But these were a virtue of Divya’s, not her mother’s.

  Meenakshi could not afford the luxury of such delicacies in behaviour. The mother hen that she was, she was worried sick whether her son-in-law would live up to his potential in life and be worthy of her little girl. However hard she tried, she couldn’t put to rest the one question that kept popping up in her head from time to time which she didn’t dare

  share with anyone: Had they rushed into the engagement a little too prematurely? Should they have waited a few years more?

  But each time doubts began nibbling at her mind, Meenakshi kept telling herself that she had known Venus right from the cradle and seen him grow into a fine young man. Venus was a ‘good boy’, and when it came to marriage, it had to count for something. All the same, Meenakshi could not put her deep-rooted apprehensions about his career to rest. They came bursting forth whenever she came face to face with him with the same mathematical precision mapping back to the Blueprint of Life: What were his grades last semester? How was this semester going? What were his GRE and TOEFL scores again? How was the app process going? Was he done short-listing universities? What were his chances? Did he talk to astrologers about it? What did students in his position in the previous batches do? Which universities gave them admissions? Was he taking tips from them? What about his cousins in the US? Did he want her to talk to her nephew in the US?

  The habit of giving Venus
the third degree crept up on Meenakshi without her even realizing it, forcing him to run for cover each time she loomed up on the horizon. It became so compulsive that when he started cutting back on his visits to the house, she started badgering him over the phone. Over time, it started to tell on his relationship with Divya. It had gotten so bad the last few months that he even avoided ringing Divya if she was at home because he didn’t want to run the risk of catching her mother at the other end. So when Meenakshi had told Divya yesterday that Venus had called, Divya was pleasantly surprised. Today, when he materialized in the house all of a sudden and even started chipping in with Sri Ramajayams for her mother, she was astonished beyond words.

  ~

  Divya returned to the living room wiping her hands with a towel. ‘What’s up with the namam on your forehead?’

  ‘Holy month. Particularly special for Vishnu,’ Venus said. He stretched his writing hand and cracked his knuckles. All that manic writing was clearly taking its toll on him. ‘Sadagopan uncle was visiting us in the morning and my mom wanted me to look proper. Where were you when I called yesterday?’

  ‘I’d gone to the campus,’ Divya said. ‘I would’ve called back, but Amma said you were going to Chengalpet.’

  ‘Yeah, went to meet Binary.’

  ‘That much I figured. Any special reason?’

  ‘Not really. I went chumma, just like that.’

  ‘So far away for no reason?’ Divya asked, plainly jealous that Venus would rather go see his friend than meet her.

  ‘Was worth it,’ Venus said. ‘Got to eat the greatest raw plantain bajji in this world. Haven’t tasted anything like that in my whole life.’

  ‘Homemade or from a shop?’

  ‘Homemade!’ Venus said. ‘His grandmother made it. All you women – my mom, your mom and you – should go sit at the old woman’s feet and learn how to make a bajji like that. Turmeric, ajwain, asafoetida, chilli powder, salt, everything was so perfectly balanced. You could smell the thing a mile away. And best of all, it comes out nice and long in one full piece like a Kerala catamaran, crisp and golden, not clumpy like you people make it – my mother included. Wow wow wow, the taste still lingers in my mouth.’